Monday, August 3, 2015

When It Looks Darker, Here Comes the Blessings

Bueno, this week I was a sinner and didn´t write in my
journal...so we´ll do a summary of what happened. From what I remember...:)

Bueno, we´ll go by investigator.

Guadalupe:

Guada is doing well. She is so awesome! I just want her
to be able to be baptized already! She told us that she wants to be a
missionary. We visited her a bit and tried to talk to her dad. We even made an
appointment with him, but he didn´t show up. We want to talk to him so that we
can really communicate what we are donig and what it is that his daughter wants
to do (get baptized). We went to pick her up on Sunday morning, but she didn´t
come. Again. I want her to be able to come so badly! She is a dry Mormon. She´s
amazing! We just don´t know what else we can do to help her.

Hna Criddle, Micaela and Romina

Romina:

Bueno, Romina is amazing! She is reading the Book of
Mormon and is really liking it! She told us that the only weird thing were the
names. Y sí, es así. Pero bueno. When we went to our appointment on Friday, she
was waiting for us with a cake. So we ate cake and mate cocido. Then, we went
through the baptismal questions for her interview. All is well and she is
absolutely ready! She told us that she was going to come to church in Bell
Ville (because she lives in San Marcos) yesterday, but she didn´t come. She had
a commitment she´d forgotten about and couldn´t come. We were really sad.

Juan:

Wow, now Juan is the big story this week. So on
Wednesday, Juan had is baptismal interview. All was fine, he passed, todo bien.
So we were organizing the baptism, and we couldn´t find clothing that would fit
him. Nowhere. We didn´t have clothes, the elders didn´t have clothes, there
weren´t clothes in the church. Nowhere. We were panicking. So we postponed the
baptism (that was on Saturday) to Sunday during the second hour of church. We
found clothing, all was well but on Saturday night, we went to see Juan and we
couldn´t find him. Which is weird. He´s always at the soccer field (because he works there
and lives there). We thought he might have had to go somewhere and everything
was fine. But, Sunday morning when we went to pick up Guadalupe, we went by his
house. It was all locked up still. So, we waited for a bit and finally he
showed up. He told us that he couldn´t come to church. He was sick. He told us that he went to the doctor on
Saturday and that he couldn´t come to church. We asked, "not even for your
baptism?" He told us no. So, we didn´t have a baptism. No baptism. We went
back to the church and drained the font. We don´t know really what happened. If
he really was sick, if so, what does he have? If he´s just scared. If he
downright doesn´t want to be baptized. We don´t know.

In short, this week was a bit dramatic. We had a failed
baptism and no investigators in the church. At times, I feel like a failure
here. Like I can´t do anything right. We work all week and then no one shows up
on Sunday. I ask myself what I´m doing wrong and I try to improve the next week
and then again, no one shows up.

Una experiencia. Tuesday we decided to dedicate the whole
day to contacts. We went around trying to contact people. Nobody let us in. Nobody. We went to one house and were about to ring the
doorbell when the woman of the house said, "No toquen el timbre chicas.
Vayan no más." (Don´t ring the doorbell. Go away.) That day was really
hard. We had a lot of rejection that day. But, on Wednesday, we found 11 new
investigators. That, to me, is a testament that when it looks really dark, the
blessings are really close. (O en español, cuando lo más oscuro se ve, ahí
viene las bendiciones.) [Or in Spanish, when it looks darker, here comes the blessing.]

But, also, lately we have been having a hard time finding
new investigators. But, this week we found 17! Much better! I am hoping that at
least one of these people progresses. At least one.

It´s really hard to be senior companion. Everything, good
or bad, is your fault. I felt really horrible yesterday with our failed
baptism. It was my fault. We didn´t plan it well, we couldn´t get
our investigator to the church, we couldn´t this, we couldn´t that. I know that
it´s really terrible to tell yourself these things, but sometimes it´s hard to
stop the thoughts. Anyway, sorry to be a Negative Nelly.

Hermana Wilson

I have been called as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and will be serving in Córdoba, Argentina.

Favorite Scripture

"I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."--John 14: 18, 27